Mersea coach Jon Williams believes his side will be facing a relegation battle in the new year.

They fell to a narrow 22-17 defeat against fellow strugglers Thurston in Eastern Counties League division one.

But the Islanders put themselves under pressure from the start.

In the opening minute the home side gave away a penalty try and earned a sin-binning at the same time.

Mersea went 19-0 down before Andy Khan scored under the posts which Matt rose converted.

After the break Mersea hit back with a try through Luke Marfleet and another through Dave Bredin.

A Thurston penalty edge them further in front.

But with the last play of the game Mersea powered up the pitch and were held up just short of the line as the whistle blew.

Wiliams said: “We started slowly and put ourselves on the back foot.

“We showed a naivety in our play and were making some poor decisions.

“They were a little bit more fired up than we were at the start of the match and we ended up chasing the game.

“Some of out tackling in the first half was weak - we tightened it up but we were making too many mistakes.

“We will facing a relegation batttle in the new year, out first game in January is against Swaffham who are below us and we need to start picking up more points.

“The saving grace on Saturday is that we picked up a losing bonus point and prevented Thurston from geeting a try scoring bonus point.

“We did show some fight , however, and we came back into the game despite having a number of players missing through unavailability and injury.”